THE CONCEPT OF ‘MANSLAUGHTER’ UNDER ENGLISH AND NIGERIANLAWS: RESOLVING CORPORATE MANSLAUGHTER ANDJURISDICTIONAL DOCTRINAL AMBIGUITIES

Аннотация

The general principles of criminal law with regard to offences against the human body
provided serious homicide offences against the human body such as ‘murder and
manslaughter.’ The paper critically looked at the different definitions of manslaughter in the
Nigerian Criminal Code, Penal Code on the one hand as well as the English Homicide Act,
on the other hand. In order to achieve this, the paper considered subsisting judicial authorities
pivoted and focused on the portions of the provisions of the Nigerian criminal and penal
codes, altogether forming, the underpinning of the ‘homicide legislations’ in Nigeria.
Consequent on the comparative investigation of the homicide legislations, the paper strived to
ascertain the effect of the application of the doctrine of homicide in the Nigerian and British
jurisdictions and ipso facto arrived at a better application of the doctrine of manslaughter in
the Nigerian legal climate. The authors argued that manslaughter is specie of the genius
‘homicide.’ The investigative effort to resort to judicial authorities in this discourse leaves us
with no option of agreeing that the Nigerian judiciary, in the exercise of their constitutional
jurisdictions provided by section 6 of the constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria
(CFRN) 1999, have drawn and elucidated on the definition of manslaughter, more
particularly ‘homicide’ as contained in the statute books. But beyond this, there is need to
extend the definition of manslaughter to corporations. The authors therefore concluded by
maintaining the process of continuous elucidation on the doctrine of homicide, more
particularly ‘corporate manslaughter’ which has rendered the ‘inherent doctrinal difficulty
less problematic,’ both in nature and scope of comprehension.